Title

Storage

Artist

Matthew Kolodziej

Preview

Medium

acrylic on canvas

Artist's Statement

The paintings use references to architecture to project a sense of dislocation, change, and compression of information. The tension created between solid and dysfunctional structures in these paintings places the viewer in an unstable negotiation of space and time. Forming and deteriorating synapses are present in the fragments, fissures, and residues on the surface of the paintings.

The studio process, akin to the way an archaeologist works, begins with documenting construction and demolition sites with photographs. The computer is used to collage multiple conflicting points of view. The states of transition, dilapidation and rejuvenation, evident in the texture, physical structure, color, and light of these places provide the foundations for the images.

Using computer filters the collages are converted into line drawings. These “maps” are projected onto canvas or an architectural space and traced to develop a labyrinth of line. In the paintings, as if constructing a façade, the digitally derived drawings are traced over with thick gel medium. Paint is poured between the lines, scrape and layered over the surface. The effect is a solid cast, or enduring fossil, of the original structures, but defined paradoxically with artificial color and material. There is a constant dialogue between the fixed structure chosen from the photographs and the editing and decomposing of that structure in the medium of paint.

The reconstructed images of the site present a space that alternates between a tenuous and fragile veneer and a believable illusion of stability. The painting space is a temporary proposal or stage for forming a sense of place and ultimately examining perception itself.